The birthday party

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Gcse scripted play 1

The birthday party

1: The play

the birthday party by Harold Pinter.

This is a dark humoured play set in an English town. It is about a couple who let out a room to a lodger called Stanley. One day two men arrive on a door step looking for rooms. The arrival of these men opens up a can of worms for Stanley, as they come from a mysterious past. Although we never discover the whole picture of what Stanley did, a web of tension is woven around the relationship that Stanley has with these men. Goldberg, the stronger character of the two, masterminds the destruction of Stanley and the play centres

Very much around the way in which they do it.

2: The extract

 We chose this section because it involved the final showdown, which is the most moving part of the play. It is the bit where Goldberg and McCann are scaring him with psychological warfare. The rest of the play really gives reader/ watcher the full background of the play. There is a lot of tension built up as the story progresses. In the scene that we going to perform is a climax until Stanley has a mental breakdown. This is made very humorous as Stanley is not expecting this and starts to feel very uncomforted as the speech is confusing him mentally.

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3: the character

I began to like McCann because he wasn’t really that strong at getting his point across but he was used by Goldberg to put pressure on his victim. I liked the idea of pier pressure because it could be used to get people to do things at you’re command. In the scenes we are practicing at the moment, Duncan Gray and I have to circle Stanley asking him questions about his life which he would rather not answer. I guess that we were confusing him until he broke down. That showed the power of pier pressure. Stanley ...

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